Meta

A friend of mine once told me that after spending years reading through historical manuals in search of new techniques to give him an edge over other fencers, he had finally come to the realization that there was no such thing. Ultimately, he said, there is no substitute for hard work, drilling and training. My friend is very wise and I could not agree with him more. There is a fantastic movement towards historical fencing in the SCA right now, but I feel that there are many who have unrealistic expectations as to what historical fencing can offer them. Further, many fencers in the SCA who are not historical fencers assume that historical fencing itself is flawed when they see that things don’t work out for those with unrealisitc expectations. In this paper, I want to look at how to get the most out of historical fencing in the SCA. Specifically, how we should approach historical fencing, what we can expect to get from it, and how to go about training as a historical fencer. Of course, while I think I have good reasons for doing what I do, I don’t pretend to have the only valid approach to answering these questions. To start with, I want to clarify the context in which I am writing. The bulk of my fencing is done within the SCA in a somewhat competitive environment. For the purposes of competition, defeating my opponent always takes precedence over “staying within a historical form.” It should […]